As part of its yearlong 125th anniversary celebration, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit visited Fordham Law on February 22 for a day in residence. Nine judges from the court joined Fordham Law professors in 10 classes throughout the day and later participated in a town hall; overall, 725 Fordham Law students heard from members of the Second Circuit about the importance of the court and its history.

“The history of the court includes a respect and reverence for the law that stands it apart from political winds,” said Dean Matthew Diller. “It’s a court marked by collegiality and mutual respect, where judges work to find consensus and disagree with respect and affection when consensus is not possible. It’s a court made up of judge’s judges.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals was established by Congress in 1891 with three judgeships and has periodically increased the number over the years. The court now comprises thirteen judges, including Hon. Denny Chin ’78, who attended Professor Olivier Sylvain’s Information Law class. Other alumni who have served on the court include Irving Kaufman ’31, William Hughes Mulligan ’42, Lawrence W. Pierce ’51, and Joseph M. McLaughlin ’59.

“I will simply say it’s such an honor for me to follow in the footsteps of these great alumni of our Law School,” said Judge Chin. ““We’ve had five Fordham Law alumni serve on the Second Circuit. In fact, we’ve had a Fordham alum serve on the Second Circuit continuously since 1961.”

Hon. Denny Chin ’78 and Olivier Sylvain

The daylong event was organized by members of the Fordham Law Review and presented in partnership with the Student Bar Association. To help the court celebrate its quasquicentennial, the Law Review published in its past October issue seven articles by prominent Second Circuit attorneys covering seven distinct areas of the law. The issue also featured four student-written notes by members of the Law Review.

“We’re so grateful to many editors of last year’s law review and this year’s law review for all of their work in producing what we think is a distinguished volume about the jurisprudence of the Second Circuit,” said Chief Judge Robert Katzmann.

Aaron Saiger and Hon. Robert Katzmann

During the afternoon town hall, judges fielded questions about the court’s decision-making process, its group dynamic, and the assignment of cases.

“There’s a tremendous level of respect that develops because people are not grabbing issues, and they’re not personalizing either the law or the court,” said Judge Dennis Jacobs, in explaining how cases are assigned randomly.

In addition to judges Chin, Katzmann, and Jacobs, other participating Second Circuit judges were Guido Calabresi, Susan L. Carney, Peter W. Hall, Pierre N. Leval, Reena Raggi, and Robert D. Sack.

Students in Fordham Law’s Advanced Seminar in Public Interest Lawyering class were joined on Feb. 6 by unfamiliar faces: Graduate School of Education (GSE) students in counseling and psychology.

The GSE students were on hand to help their Lincoln Center campus peers interpret their results of Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) self-scorable personality assessments, which the law students had taken the week before.

The personality assessment is used to help people better understand which aspects of 16 distinctive personality types describes them best—knowledge which can improve any group interactions. The law students have organized themselves into six teams and each group works collaboratively throughout the semester on a project with an outside public interest legal organization on issues such as the school-to-prison pipeline, student debt, homeless youth, and refugees. The seminar, the capstone academic requirement of the Stein Scholars Program, is team-taught by Fordham Law Professor Bruce Green, the Louis Stein Chair, and Sherri Levine, associate director of the Law School’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics.

Levine said the public lawyering class requires more problem solving, project management, and collaboration than most law classes. So five years ago, Green and Levine asked Margo Jackson, Ph.D., professor of counseling psychology in the GSE’s Division of Psychological and Educational Services, if she’d be willing to visit their law class to help students develop their collaborative team-building skills.

“Learning how to read a court case and spotting the issues are very important, but all of these other [team-building] skills are important too,” Levine said. “The sooner that’s recognized and the more opportunities you have to operationalize them, the easier it will be to become a versatile and skilled practitioner upon graduation.”

The MBTI assessment posits that people exist on a spectrum of behavior depending on the setting they are in, be it work, home, or school.

As the law students shared one another’s results—such as ENTJ (extraversion, intuition, thinking, judgment), INFP (introversion, intuition, feeling, perception), or ISTJ (introversion, sensing, thinking, judgment) – the GSE students helped them consider how to better understand their own and their group colleagues’ personality preferences in ways to collaborate effectively with their particular community social justice projects.

In previous years, Jackson has recruited students from her Psychology of Career Development class to join her; this year two master’s students and two doctoral candidates are assisting from her Career Strength Research Team. The key to these sessions, she said, is focusing on strengths, not deficits, that the legal team members bring to the group. That’s because research shows that the more diverse perspectives you have when it comes to problem solving, the better the product.

“What always strikes me when we do this [with the law students]is that my own students also find out the limits and the strengths of their own approaches to assessment and helping with others,” she said. “If you take the perspective that you’re the all-knowing savior, you’re only focusing on others’ weaknesses, and not on their strengths.”

Liat Zabludovsky, a GSE doctoral candidate, found the session to be a “formative experience” that forced her to think more deeply about her path in counseling psychology. The field is facilitative, rather than solely diagnostic, an aspect it shares with the MBTI assessment, which posits that people exist on a spectrum of behavior depending on the setting they are in, be it work, home, or school.

“Explaining counseling psychology versus clinical psychology, and why I chose it, to a group of people who are competent in completely different areas, was much more interesting than I expected,” she said.

Marcella Jayne, a second year law school student who scored as ENTJ, said that her team’s project, designing workshops to help students avoid crippling

Fordham Law students Kenneth Edelson, Eva Schneider, Greg Manring, and Thomas Griffith discuss their results with a GSE student Christine Romano (top right), while Sherri Levine and Bruce Green look on.

student debt from for-profit schools, will require the contribution of all team members.

Jayne said that, prior to getting the assessment results, she would have never thought of giving her teammates positive feedback. “To me, that would almost feel condescending,” she said.

But when one group member said ‘I need positive feedback, or I’m going to disengage,’ she realized that each team member has different needs to feel motivated to contribute.

“In team environments, we each walk in with our own expectations. We don’t usually have these open-ended, touchy-feely conversations about what we’re each expecting and what our assumptions are,” Jayne said. “The openness to say something like that is good.”

For Levine, working with the GSE is an exercise in practicing what they preach about the value of collaboration and teamwork.

“We think [teamwork]definitely will serve you well in your future careers, and here we are trying to do just that. We’re working in a team with another part of the university, and collaborating with persons who do very different types of work,” she said.

America’s zero-tolerance approach to public school discipline has created an epidemic of suspensions and expulsions that punishes everyday behavior, disproportionately targets African-American children, and undermines schools in the process, University of South Carolina Law professor and author Derek W. Black said during a talk at Fordham Law School on March 6.

Black’s book, Ending Zero Tolerance: The Crisis of Absolute School Discipline, calls for widespread reform of the methods that resulted in more than three million suspensions and expulsions in K-12 public schools in 2011, according to a U.S. Department of Education report released in 2014. The troubling combination of high-profile school shootings, such as Columbine in 1999, and federal legislation, including the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, caused a kind of punitive overreach by school administrators and policy makers, Black said.

This new climate grossly impacted African-American students, who are suspended at a rate three to six times that of their white peers, depending on the state and locality, Black noted during his talk hosted by Fordham’s Education Law Collaborative.

“The numbers don’t lie. We have a racial bias problem that causes disparities in school discipline,” said Black, a former attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He explained that his book aims to debunk theories that African-American students misbehave more than white classmates and that removing “bad” students protects the “good” students from having their school experience undermined.

Rather than an aberration, racial discipline disparities have been the rule dating back to 1960s school desegregation. White families said they would tolerate integration but demanded “order,” Black said.

“As soon as African-American and white children began to go to school together the differential application of school discipline started to occur very quickly,” the author added, explaining that the standard national narrative about school desegregation more often focuses on busing.

In 1975, the Supreme Court held in Goss v. Lopez that a public school must conduct a hearing before suspending a student. Such hearings at one time resulted in 50 percent of suspensions being overturned, but that number has dropped to 10 percent, leaving students without much recourse in the event of suspension or expulsion.

Today, school discipline is generally framed as an issue of the “good vs. “bad” students, but a growing body of research suggests suspensions and expulsions have a negative effect on innocent bystanders, not just the punished students.

“Suspension and expulsion as a primary tool of dealing with student misbehavior actually changes the other students’ experiences in school, their perception of school, and helps sever their idea of a positive school environment,” Black said. “At some point, discipline becomes too harsh and even the good student rebels.”

The suspended student experiences long-term impacts, often including another suspension, while failing to receive help for the root causes of their behavior—challenges faced outside school, academic difficulties, and emotional and behavioral disabilities, Black said.

Black’s book cites three theories of discipline reform:

• The federal constitution should limit irrational discipline. Rational discipline must involve consideration for intent, culpability, and whether a series of misbehavior exists when determining what punishment, if any, is warranted.
• Because students possess a constitutional right to education, states must provide a good reason to take away this right. Thus, Black said schools’ response to misbehavior must be narrowly tailored, so that if there is a method to deal with this other than expulsion, that should be tried.
• When overly harsh discipline policies undermine the quality of a school’s education, all students, not just the suspended ones, have a claim against the state.

Even recent positive developments in school discipline reform only highlight the brutality and absurdity at play, Black observed. Recently, 11 states banned suspension or expulsion for elementary students because no evidence existed that the punishment yielded any positive impacts.

“Why in the heck are they suspending or expelling first- or second-graders in the first place?” Black asked rhetorically. “These states have done nothing to stop suspension or expulsion in middle or high school, where the lion’s share of suspensions and expulsions are. It’s very small progress.”

A team of two students from Fordham Law’s Dispute Resolution Society advanced twice to reach the quarterfinal round last month at the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Commercial Mediation Competition in Paris.

Rachelle Polsky ’18 and Edgar Mendoza ’17, accompanied by student coach Allison Silverman ’17, made it far into the elimination round from a field of mediation teams representing 65 international universities.

“The ICC competition is tremendous,” said Maria Vanikiotis ’15, who, along with Ariel Choi ’15, served as the team’s alumna coach. “Teams come from all over the world. It’s a really great experience to meet law students from other programs, observe their style, and learn from them.”

Each year, the ICC pits competitors against each other in a series of mock mediations, presided over by professional mediators. These scenarios are modeled off those faced by the mediators in the course of their work.

Polsky and Mendoza received four such problems from the ICC this past November, which they then analyzed and mooted in preparation for the competition, often arriving as early as 8 a.m. to work on their arguments before attending a full day of classes. The pair rehearsed the problems with Mendoza serving as the client and Polsky as the attorney, roles they held throughout.

“One interesting problem we worked on was a copyright dispute for a hit song that was recorded in the late ‘60s,” said Polsky. “The songwriter had just recently passed away and she didn’t know back when the song was released that she had any legal recourse. Mendoza played Yak Print, a fellow musician who was seeing the copyright claim through on the band’s behalf against some very successful musicians.”

Though most universities competing in the ICC mediation competition sent four-member teams, Fordham elected to send only Polsky and Mendoza. Out of the 65 teams that competed, Fordham was one of only 16 that advanced in the competition, finishing among the top eight teams overall.

“If we had sent four people it would have been two pairs and ultimately they would have received one overall score for Fordham,” said Silverman. “But Polsky and Mendoza were really eager to take on all four problems. It was twice as much work for them, but they were fantastic. They got better each time, and they were certainly the team to watch.”

Students from Fordham’s DRS have made impressive showings at the ICC mediation competition before, taking home top honors in 2011, and securing multiple entries to the contest’s elimination round in succeeding years. Professor Jacqueline Nolan-Haley serves as faculty advisor to the DRS and was particularly admiring of the ICC team’s achievement.

“I am impressed by the dedication of Rachelle and Edgar and extremely proud of their accomplishments in the international arena,” Nolan-Haley said.

The DRS rigorously vets its membership and competes both domestically and internationally throughout the year.

“DRS is one of the best things I did while I was at Fordham, and the alumni network is really strong,” said Vanikiotis. “We really reach out to each other; we like to go back and participate because we want to give back to the program that gave us so much.”

Fordham Law’s Dispute Resolution program was recently ranked #14 in the country by U.S News & World Report.

Fordham Law student Lorena Jiron ‘17  was featured in National Jurist’s 2017 “Law Student of the Year” special issue list.

Lorena Jiron was raised in Miami by a single mother, who immigrated to the U.S. from Nicaragua in 1974. After her mother passed away in 2009 following a diagnosis of cervical cancer, Jiron was responsible for settling her affairs, no simple task for a grieving daughter.

…

However, this experience opened her eyes to what she currently sees — that Latino populations in places like New York City lack critical legal resources, especially when it comes to the immigration status of an individual. Even individuals who hold a green card and have some sort of legal status don’t know all of their rights, what they can do with those rights, or even if they can turn to the police for help, she says.

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She has observed this vulnerability firsthand through legal internships. She has worked in the immigration unit of New York Legal Assistance Group, where she assisted migrants in securing or continuing lawful status in the U.S.; the immigration and family law unit of Legal Services NYC in the Bronx, where she aided West Africans in a similar vein; and at Day One, an organization that works with young people ages 16- 24 who are victims of intimate partner violence. She also interned for the Honorable Jenny Rivera of the New York State Court of Appeals.

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Following graduation from Fordham Law School, she would like to continue her work with single mothers who struggle with domestic violence, many of whom are not native English speakers. She is drawn to this population because of the struggles her mother faced while raising her alone; the stigma women in these communities face for being young and pregnant; and how particularly vulnerable they are because they are young. Laws surrounding young people on the brink of adulthood can be particularly confusing.

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During the time between finishing her bachelor’s degree and enrolling at Fordham, Lorena decided she wanted to live outside the U.S. While it would be easy to imagine her choosing Latin America, where her parents are from, she decided instead to move to Egypt to broaden her cultural perspective. As she was settling in to life there, teaching English and gaining a grasp of Arabic, another destination called: an opportunity to work as a teacher and curriculum designer at the School of Leadership Afghanistan, a girls-only boarding school in Kabul.

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Jiron says she learned more about herself while living in Kabul than during any other stage of her young life. While the limitations of life as a woman in Afghanistan are a prominent topic in the media, it was entirely different to experience life with these women, directly observing the struggles they face as well as their strength and resilience.

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Her determination to provide a quality education for young women there came from her mother’s emphasis on education as a means of empowerment. She remembers that her mother would say, “Your job is to get As, and my job is to put you through school.”

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In her first year at Fordham Law, Jiron was selected for the school’s nationally recognized Stein Scholars Program. This is an academic and public interest service program for all three years of law school; students complete a specialized curriculum tailored to public interest law that includes an externship, as well as non-academic components that develop and enhance leadership and communication skills.

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As a board member of Fordham’s Latin American Law Students Association, Jiron has also joined with MetroLALSA, a coalition of students from the 13 metropolitan New York-area law schools committed to the advancement of Latino students in the legal profession. Every year, MetroLALSA organizes a conference called Pa’lante! (“moving forward” in colloquial Spanish), but Fordham had never hosted it. Jiron wanted to change that. Not only was Jiron’s bid for the conference successful, the organization named her chair of the event, which took place in March 2016.

…

As Jiron amasses insights and confronts challenges, her perspective — as a student and as a burgeoning lawyer — only widens. Next semester, she will intern at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where she will venture into the world of civil rights litigation.

Read full article.

One semester after arguing the case before the New York Civil Supreme Court, Fordham Law School’s Criminal Defense Clinic is continuing its fight to have the NYPD’s transit recidivist policy, which mandates arrests based on an individual’s arrest history, ruled unconstitutional.

3L clinic members Marjorie Dugan and Claire Glass argued before the court in fall 2016 that the NYPD’s transit recidivist policy violates Article 1, Section 12 of the New York State Constitution’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. This semester, Dugan and Glass, plus 2Ls Nina Kucharczyk and Brian Kraekel, are working on drafting an appellate brief in the expected event they would need to appeal a judge’s ruling.

The NYPD transit recidivist policy puts many subway passengers at risk. In 2015 alone, subway ridership surged to 1.763 billion. Activities constituting transit violations include eating and sleeping on the train, walking between subway cars, and a single person taking up two seats—everyday activities that many New Yorkers don’t know are against the law.

“These activities could be addressed with a summons, warning, or nothing at all, but under this policy they must result in an arrest for people with certain arrest histories,” Kucharczyk said.

The NYPD’s transit recidivist policy came to the Criminal Defense Clinic’s attention following the 2010 arrest of a man whom police stopped for walking between subway cars. The clinic helped resolve the man’s case in 2011 before challenging the NYPD’s policy as a whole. Notably, police testified in a deposition that they did not intend to arrest the original client before checking his arrest history, but were required to arrest him in accordance with departmental policy.

“When an officer has probable cause but no intention of acting on it—and does not act on it— then the analysis is under the umbrella of a limited stop, where an individual has more protection,” Glass explained. The team argued that transit stops are analogous to traffic stops, which the Supreme Court of the United States has held are limited stops, and not full-blown arrests, even though officers often have probable cause to arrest at the outset of the detention.

New York state law does not allow police to escalate a limited stop to a full-blown arrest unless there is a present suspicion of criminal activity beyond the transit violation or an obstacle to issuing a ticket, Dugan noted. A person’s arrest history cannot be the basis for objective suspicion of present criminal activity, the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled in People v. Boulware (1987).

NYPD’s transit recidivist policy is yet another broken windows policing tactic, related to stop-and-frisk, which then-federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled was unconstitutional in Floyd v. City of New York.

“This lawsuit asks the court to declare the policy unconstitutional so other New Yorkers are spared the injustice our client suffered,” Glass said. “He certainly isn’t alone in having this experience.”

Whether arguing the case before the New York Civil Supreme Court or working on a potential appeal, the Criminal Defense Clinic’s members agreed their experiences on this case will bolster their careers post-law school. For Glass and Dugan, the clinic has provided an enriching opportunity to prepare and give oral arguments and work on the appeal.

“It’s one thing to study the Fourth Amendment in Criminal Procedure but applying it to an individual case in the real world is entirely different, and the clinic gives us the tools and opportunity to do so,” Glass said.

“It really brings the Constitution to life,” Dugan agreed.

Student members of Fordham Law’s Brendan Moore Trial Advocacy Center have, over the past three weeks, notched a quartet of rousing successes in national competition.

Since the beginning of March, teams of Moore Advocates have won second place at the Florida State University College of Law Mock Trial Competition, entered the quarterfinals at the American University Washington College of Law’s Capitol City Challenge, finished second at the American Bar Association National Criminal Justice Trial Competition, and taken first place at the American Association for Justice’s Student Trial Advocacy Competition New York Regional.

The team that won the AAJ competition’s New York Regional—students Elias Laris ‘18, Meredith McBride ‘18, Elizabeth Moore ‘18, and Tom Sperber ‘18, as well as alumni coaches Brittany Russell ‘13 and Mike Hardin ‘14—will face off against 13 other regional champions at the competition’s national tournament, beginning on March 30 in Cleveland, Ohio.

“What makes our team unique is that each member not only is willing to work so incredibly hard but also is so naturally gifted, and they all have such great personalities, which comes through in their advocacy skills,” said Russell.

The AAJ competition called on the winning team, one of two Fordham Law sent to the contest, to balance technical knowledge with a forceful presentation in arguing both sides of a personal injury civil lawsuit.

“I think we have a great team synergy,” said Laris. “It works well to have us working as one whole unit in determining how to go up there and do the best we can.”

In Tallahassee, Moore Advocates secured second place honors in the FSU College of Law Mock Trial Competition. Alumni Mike Higgins ’08 and Justina Rivera ’10 coached a team composed of Caitlin Ross ‘17, Vin Hua ’17, Devavrat Chaudhary ‘17, and Jeremy Krebs ’18 toward securing a $1,000 prize. With its runner-up performance, the team came close to repeating Fordham’s championship showing from last year’s FSU Mock Trial Competition.

Devavrat Chaudhary, Jeremy Krebs, Mike Higgins, Vin Hua, and Kate Ross

“The FSU Mock Trial competition was an incredible opportunity to solidify my advocacy skills and appreciate the value of teamwork,” Ross said. “Thanks to my coaches, I felt prepared to take on any potential legal argument, and our team was primed to build on each person’s strengths to move ahead.”

In Washington D.C., a team of Moore Advocates reached the quarterfinals from a field of 20 teams in the American University Washington College of Law’s Capitol City Challenge. Anthony Freemen ‘17, Katherine Peluso ’18, Daron Ravenborg ’17, and Kathleen Dallon ’18 secured an invitation to next year’s competition by serving as the defense and prosecution teams, respectively, in a mock trial problem involving the theft of a diamond necklace from a gala.

Adam Shlahet, Katherine Peluso, Anthony Freeman, Daron Ravenborg, Katie Dallon, and Bernard Ozarowski

In addition to the team’s success, Dallon was individually honored with the competition’s Best Prosecution Advocate Award, one of only two individual honors granted to participants.

“Katie did an excellent job,” said Bernard Ozarowski ‘10, who co-coached the team with wife and fellow Fordham alumna Lily Ozarowski ‘12. “She’s very, very poised. She comes off as calm and confident, and presents extremely well to an evaluator, and that suggests that down the line she’s going to present extremely well to real juries.”

A team of four Moore Advocates also took second place at the ABA National Criminal Justice Trial Competition in Chicago. Ted Becker ‘17, Brianna Gallo ‘17, Gabriel Reale ‘17, and Shrey Sharma ‘17, under the tutelage of alumni coaches Zachary Green ’14 and Cheryl McDermott ’07, distinguished themselves from a field of 20 trial advocacy teams. This particularly selective competition drew its participants from some of the top law schools in the country, pitting Fordham’s Moore Advocates against law students from universities such as Georgetown, Northwestern, and Temple.

Gabriel Reale, Ted Becker, Zack Green, Shrey Sharma, and Brianna Gallo

“Our achievements this semester were the result of countless hours of brainstorming, performance, critique and revision. We believe that success at trial is achieved through a combination of talent and relentless preparation.” said Adam Shlahet, the Moore Advocacy Center’s full-time director. “Our faculty, coaches, and alumni instill in our students a work ethic that is second to none.”

In addition to hosting two mock trial competitions per year at Fordham Law, the Moore Advocates compete each year in up to 20 inter-school trial advocacy competitions, which draw from law school teams across the country.

Fordham Law School bested 25 teams from across the country to capture the 2017 Cardozo/BMI Entertainment and Communications Law Moot Court Competition earlier this month in New York City.

The 2L team of Aviva M. Kushner (captain) and Benjamin Klein argued a total of seven rounds over the four-day competition, culminating in a championship victory over the University of California–Hastings Law School on March 5.

Kushner and Klein argued before a panel of three federal judges in the championship round, including the Hon. Robert Katzmann, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Kushner said knowing Judge Katzmann, whom she described as the “godfather of legislative history,” would preside over the final provided extra motivation.

“Arguing before the godfather of the materials we relied on was both terrifying and thrilling,” Kushner said of Katzmann. “The idea we came out victorious is incredible and something I’ll never forget.”

The Hon. James Oetken and Hon. Jesse Furman, both of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, also presided over the championship round. Kushner’s teammate Klein called the experience of arguing before the three federal judges “the highlight of my law school experience so far.”

The case Kushner and Klein argued involved two questions: 1) under what circumstances websites lose their “safe harbor” protection for carrying material that infringes a copyright and 2) whether a defendant who admits copying a portion of a sound recording may invoke an affirmative de minimis defense.

Both team members praised the preparation and aid they received from the team’s coach Professor Maria L. Marcus, team editor Mary Hannah Koseki, Fordham alumni who mooted them, and their classmates who traveled to Cardozo to watch them compete. In particular, Kushner described the moot of the Hon. Richard Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York as a “huge moot for us” a week and a half before the competition.

Klein and Kushner agreed that the rigorous preparation they underwent prior to the event made them comfortable once the competition started and allowed them to tackle questions head-on and let their individual personalities shine.

“After writing an intriguing brief, the team members launched themselves into arguing both sides of the case,” said Professor Marcus. “As petitioner, they forcefully presented reasons why the website had forfeited safe harbor protection for carrying infringing material. Switching to respondent’s side, the team was aided by its close attention to the judges’ prior questions to petitioner. The Fordham team members were ready for anything, and this was evident as they rocketed to the championship.”

The Burton Awards for Legal Achievement has honored Fordham Law School student Joshua Liebman ’17 with a 2017 Distinguished Legal Writing Award.

The Burton Awards, a nonprofit program administrated in association with the Library of Congress and sponsored by the legal trade journal Law360, singled out for distinction Liebman’s note, “Dishonest Ethical Advocacy?: False Defenses in Criminal Court,” which appeared last year in the Fordham Law Review.

From a national field of law student publications drawn from top law school journals, the Burton Awards chooses ten pieces per year for this distinction, placing a special emphasis on the quality of nominees’ writing and their advocacy for reform of the legal system. Each law school can nominate one publication for the award each year.

“Dishonest Ethical Advocacy?” addresses a complex ethical issue inherent in an adversarial justice system: To what extent should courts allow criminal defense attorneys to defend their clients when they know their clients are guilty?

After weighing the advantages and disadvantages of either entirely forbidding or entirely permitting this practice, Liebman concludes his paper by recommending a joint approach.

“Rather than accepting or rejecting false defenses wholesale,” Liebman writes, “this Note argues that the best reading of the [ethics rules governing lawyers]permits some false defense tactics and prohibits others.”

The awards ceremony, at which U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg will also be honored, will take place in May at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Liebman earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude from Columbia University, where he majored in political science and music. He is a Stein Scholar in Public Interest Law and Ethics and serves as associate editor of the Fordham Law Review. He has also worked in the Law School’s Federal Litigation Clinic and its Legislative and Policy Advocacy Clinic.

The Fordham Sports Law Forum’s 21st Annual Symposium convened on March 24 with a dynamic group of front-office executives, player agents, legal scholars, and journalists addressing cutting-edge issues in professional and collegiate athletics.

The daylong event featured panels on “A Uniform Framework for the Regulation of Sports Betting,” “Pay for Play for Student Athletes: Applying Antitrust Laws to the NCAA,” and “Modern Challenges in Negotiating Collective Bargaining Agreements.”

During her morning keynote, Anastasia Danias Schmidt ’98, senior vice president and chief litigation officer for the National Football League, highlighted the myriad ways sports can be “a powerful driver for social change and an incredible platform for discussion on important social and political issues.” This is especially true with the NFL, the league that represents the most popular sport in America.

In 2014, the NFL responded to a rash of high-profile domestic violence incidents involving players, most notably running back Ray Rice, by partnering with the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The NFL committed $25 million over five years to the organization, and in the first year of their partnership 93,000 more hotline calls were answered, Schmidt said.

“The fact this is very visible in the context of sport, we’re hoping that this will raise more awareness, and leads to more interventions, more solutions, and more resources for people who want them and need them,” said Schmidt.

The NFL has also used its popularity to stand against off-field discrimination, Schmidt noted.

In response to Arizona’s Senate Bill 1062, the NFL threatened to move the Super Bowl from Phoenix in 2015 if the so-called religious freedom bill discriminating against LGBTQ people passed. Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill, and the game went on as scheduled, drawing an estimated 114 million viewers. The NFL had previously moved the Super Bowl from Arizona in 1993 because the state refused to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Schmidt said.

Individual athletes also have the power to challenge the prevailing wisdom of their time, Schmidt said, using boxer Muhammad Ali, tennis star Billie Jean King, and Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos as examples.

In the NFL last season, San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police brutality toward African-Americans became one of the year’s most talked about sports stories. Regardless of whether you believe Kaepernick acted right or wrong in kneeling during the national anthem, Schmidt said that his protest proved that sports drive debate about key societal issues in ways no other entertainment can.

The day’s second panel explored the potential of paying college athletes, via the ongoing Jenkins v. NCAA case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Jenkins argues that the NCAA, along with universities and the conferences in which they compete, conspired to cap the value of athletic scholarships to room, board, books, and fees.

The suit, if successful, could allow players to receive compensation beyond their scholarship, both from universities, in the form of graduate tuition and greater healthcare benefits, and corporations eager to sign star players to endorsement deals, panelists said. The latter benefit for student-athletes would have serious implications on the concept of amateurism, which the NCAA contends is integral to its product. Jeffrey L. Kessler, a partner with Winston & Strawn LLP, who is one of the attorneys in Jenkins, gave the afternoon keynote address following a lively discussion during the day’s final panel about collective bargaining agreements.

The Immigration Advocacy Project, one of Fordham Law’s public service student groups, received the 2017 NYSBA President’s Pro Bono Service Award for its outstanding volunteer efforts on the behalf of asylum seekers held in a family immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas.

Since March 2016, thirty IAP students donated more than 1,000 hours providing aid to Central American women and children at the South Texas Family Residential Center. Volunteer groups, such as the IAP, ensure detained families do not face complex expedited removal proceedings, including credible fear interviews, unrepresented.

“It’s a recognition not just of the individual students who put in a week’s worth of time every time we go to Texas but also a reflection of the immense support we get from the Law School,” said IAP co-chair Emerson Argueta of the NYSBA award.

Argueta and fellow co-chair Alex Mintz thanked the Feerick Center for Social Justice and Fordham Law Dean Matthew Diller for their extensive and continuous support of the project. The IAP is the Feerick Center’s student partner in planning, recruiting, training, and executing service trips to Dilley.

In March 2016, a group of six Fordham Law students made their inaugural journey to Dilley as part of the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project. Since then, Fordham has sent three student groups and one alumni group there to work with asylum seekers.

While in Dilley, volunteers help women prepare for their credible fear interview, a requirement of U.S. immigration services for those who want to apply for asylum and are subject to expedited removal. If an asylum officer finds an individual to have credible fear of persecution or torture, the officer refers her case to an immigration judge for a full hearing on the asylum claim.

“Nothing exhibits Fordham Law School’s motto of ‘In the service of others’ more than helping people who have no chance at representation without us,” Mintz said.

From a law school perspective, the IAP’s work is important for two fundamental reasons, according to the Feerick Center’s Bree Bernwanger, who, along with Feerick Center Executive Director Dora Galacatos, has accompanied students on volunteer trips to Dilley.

First, the Trump administration’s prioritization of immigration enforcement policies, without offering protections for asylum seekers, is expected to increase the need for services like those the IAP offers. Second, the work prepares a new generation of service lawyers for the challenges of working with a hostile administration and within systems seeking to deny access to counsel.

“IAP has shown exceptional leadership, grit, and dedication in responding to one of the most inhumane affronts to due process and American values of our time: the detention of vulnerable, non-criminal, asylum-seeking women and children along the Texas border,” Bernwanger wrote in her nomination letter to the NYSBA.

Policies at Dilley have evolved in new and challenging ways in recent months since President Trump’s inauguration. Volunteers are not allowed in the physical space where services are administered unless they have a clear appointment. Changing procedural tactics have provided real world learning experiences for students on how to maintain composure and focus on their objectives in settings where the law is constantly evolving, Argueta noted.

These changing tactics have demonstrated the need for even greater volunteer involvement at Dilley. During the last week of March, the IAP, in conjunction with the Coalition of Concerned Students, displayed a large installation on the third floor of the Law School featuring a map of Central America illustrating the geographic and legal journey for asylum seekers; in traveling this route some of the women and children fleeing violence and oppression will ultimately meet Fordham Law students, such as Argueta and Mintz, this August and for years to come.

Fordham Law’s five-week privacy program was featured in an NY1 Spectrum News video. The video also features Andrea Flink, privacy fellow at Fordham Law.

“We talk about location services and how not to be tracked by different companies, we teach them how to set the privacy settings on their social media platforms”, said Flink.

Watch full video.

Lincoln Square Legal Services, Inc., the nonprofit law firm running many of Fordham Law’s clinics, scored a major court victory this spring for a Long Island bath products manufacturer embroiled in a trademark dispute over her popular soap line designed after the periodic table of elements.

Students from the Samuelson-Glushko Intellectual Property and Information Law Clinic and the Federal Litigation Clinic teamed up throughout 2016 to write motion papers and conduct oral arguments, advocating for the ability of the manufacturer, Just Bubbly, to produce its “It’s Elementary Periodic Table Soap” line. This March, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed the suit against Just Bubbly with prejudice, ruling that its imprints of the periodic table elements on soap products did not violate trademark law.

“If this product were pulled, I would have had to close my company,” said Just Bubbly owner Mariann Smith, who has sold handmade soap products since 1999 and periodic table soap products since 2014. “Literally and figuratively, the team from Fordham saved my company. I’m still in business because of the work they did.”

Getting Their Hands Dirty

Smith approached IP clinic director Ron Lazebnik around the 2015 Christmas break, months after being served with a second lawsuit involving her periodic table soap. A California judge dismissed the first suit on jurisdictional grounds.

Based on their meeting, Professor Lazebnik believed that Smith’s case provided potential for a valuable litigation experience for students not only in his clinic but also in Professor Michael W. Martin’s Federal Litigation Clinic. Once students dug into the case, an opportunity to rid Smith of the suit quickly emerged, Lazebnik said. A team featuring clinical students Justin Giles ‘16, Barbara Leal ‘17, Christina Menga ‘16, Aditya Ramanathan ‘16, and Felicia A. Siegel ‘16 assembled soon after Lazebnik’s meeting with Smith.

While poring over statutes and case law, the students discovered the trademark law doctrine of aesthetic functionality, the linchpin of their argument for a motion to dismiss. In trademark law, utilitarian features of a product or package are not protectable, because all competitors should be able to provide that functionality to consumers. Aesthetic functionality says that a product’s or packaging’s aesthetically pleasing features are also not protectable under trademark law when they are incorporated to improve the commercial success of a product rather than help consumers identify the product’s manufacturer.

The suit against Smith was brought by California-based Bubble Genius LLC, whose “In Your Element” soap line also incorporates the periodic table. According to Giles, consumers are buying soap that looks like the periodic table not because it’s made by a specific manufacturer but because the product is “cool.”

“American trademark law is not meant to give one side a monopoly on something if it’s cool,” Giles said, explaining that the plaintiff sought to prevent other periodic table soap products for this reason, among others. “It’s meant to stop someone from saying their product is Coke, if it’s not Coke.”

The matter came down to whether Bubble Genius LLC’s design contained protectable content. The students argued successfully that it did not because the periodic table exists in the public domain.

“Once we broke down the law, it became very apparent the plaintiff’s case didn’t exist,” Siegel added. From that realization, the students’ focus turned to effectively translating and simplifying aspects of trademark law for the court in an easily understandable fashion that could lead to an early resolution, Siegel added.

Giles and Siegel credited Lazebnik and Martin for providing them guidance as needed but otherwise allowing the students an opportunity to develop their own case.

Cleaning Up

Whereas students in the spring semester cultivated an argument from case law and then made it accessible for a judge, the students who inherited the case in the fall semester faced a different challenge. Namely, they had to internalize all the cases cited by their predecessors—and their opponents—during a grueling three-week preparation designed to address every possible question a judge might raise.

“The previous interns created an unbelievable brief,” noted Tziporah Pill ’17, who worked on the case during the fall 2016 semester. “So once we had the cases under our belt, it was easy to take their brief and turn it into an argument because they did such a great job.”

Pill described the aesthetic functionality argument—which the students and their instructors agreed was their strongest, given their limited time—as a “slam dunk situation.”

Still, there were tense moments in the week or so leading up to the Nov. 1 oral argument, when Stephanie D’Angelo ’17 came down with flu-like symptoms and had to visit an urgent care facility for treatment. On the scheduled day for oral arguments, D’Angelo chose to speak before the court rather than have a teammate fill in, confident that her 12-hour days prepping for the moment would win out over any residual sickness she felt.

“Once we began comparing the soap’s aesthetic functionality with relevant case law, you could see in the judge’s eyes that our argument was resonating,” observed D’Angelo, who worked on the oral argument with Pill, Penina Green ‘17 and Nick Tantone ’17. When the team left the argument, they felt confident the judge would dismiss the case with prejudice, Pill added, but continued researching the next steps in case the judge did not dismiss with prejudice.

In Their Element

Four months later, Smith received the news she had desired, in the form of the judge’s ruling. She exhaled knowing that no appeal would be forthcoming, and that she could focus on continuing her line that to date features 26 elements. She described Fordham’s advocacy efforts—from keeping her abreast of the case and explaining it to her in layman’s terms to their court arguments—as “extraordinary.”

“The Fordham Law team was so thorough in both their research and support,” Smith said. “Nothing was left unaddressed. As a small business owner, that made me feel very secure.”

Giles, who now works for Quinn Emanuel in New York, said that the day Lazebnik sent him the opinion to dismiss the case was “one of the happiest, most personally fulfilling professional moments I’ve had.”

“It’s great that the client was able to keep her business going,” Giles said, adding it pleased him to know all the clinic’s work wasn’t “just an academic exercise.”

Members of the fall semester clinical team shared Giles’ enthusiasm for Smith and the clinical experience.

“How many law students graduating as 3Ls can say they were part of a winning group before the Eastern District?” D’Angelo asked rhetorically. “It’s not many. I am very grateful to have had this experience.”

Students in Professor Elizabeth Maresca’s Federal Tax Clinic recently won a victory for a man whose hardship waiver for an IRA rollover had been denied by the IRS.

The below analysis of the case was written by attorney James R. Malone Jr., principal at Post & Schell, for his blog Tax Controversy Posts. It is reposted here in full with the firm’s permission.

A Fair Decision: IRS Refusal of Hardship Waiver for Rollover Contributions Is Overturned

A retired New York City policeman who missed the deadline to roll over retirement plan distributions into an IRA sought a hardship waiver and asked the IRS for “a fair decision” based on his personal difficulties. He received it from the Tax Court in a precedential opinion. Trimmer v. Comm’r, Docket No. 27238-14, 2017 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 15 (Apr. 20, 2017).

Mr. Trimmer worked as a New York City police officer for twenty years until he retired in April of 2011. His wife worked as a school teacher. 2017 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 15 at *3. Mr. Trimmer had planned to work as a security guard with the New York Stock Exchange after retirement, but that job was not offered to him. Shortly thereafter, he began to display symptoms of a major depressive disorder. Id. at *4.

In late May and early June of 2010, Mr. Trimmer received two retirement account distribution checks totaling over $100,000, which he left sitting on his dresser for over a month before depositing them into the couple’s joint bank account. Id. at *5. The money remained in the account untouched until April of 2012, when Mr. Trimmer moved the funds to an IRA account at the urging of the couple’s tax preparer. Id. at *6. The couple’s return reported the distributions as non-taxable, but the 1099-Rs indicated that the distributions were early and no exception applied. Id.

Over time, Mr. Trimmer’s condition improved, and his symptoms were in remission by the summer. Id. at *7. Thereafter, in December of 2013, the IRS wrote to the Trimmers, outlining proposed changes to their return, which included $39,963 in additional tax based primarily on the retirement plan distributions and the associated penalty. Id. at *7. The notice told them that they should respond to the IRS if they disagreed with the proposed changes, and, after an extension, they did so. Id. at *7-*8.

Specifically, Mr. Trimmer wrote back, explaining that he had simply made a mistake because he “went through a rough time upon separation from my job.” Noting that none of the money had been spent and the hardship the additional tax would impose on his family, Mr. Trimmer asked the IRS to “come to a fair decision.” Id. at *10. The letter was acknowledged by the operations manager at the IRS Andover campus, who indicated that the Trimmers would hear from the IRS in sixty days. Three days later, the operations manager sent the Trimmers a letter indicating simply that distributions become taxable if not rolled over within sixty days; the letter contained no reference to the procedure for requesting a hardship waiver. Id. A notice of deficiency followed, and the Trimmers filed a petition with the Tax Court.

In the Tax Court, the Trimmers acknowledged that Mr. Trimmer failed to meet the rollover deadline, but asserted that he qualified for a hardship waiver under section 402(c)(3)(B) of the Code, which authorizes a waiver of the deadline “where the failure to waive such requirement would be against equity or good conscience, including casualty, disaster, or other events beyond the reasonable control of the individual subject to such requirement.” I.R.C. § 402(c)(3)(B). In response, the IRS asserted multiple technical defenses:

• First, it asserted that Mr. Trimmer could not qualify for a waiver because he did not apply in accordance with the governing revenue procedure, Rev. Proc 2003-16, 2003-1 C. B. 359, which called for a request for a private letter ruling.
• Second, it asserted that there was no final administrative determination denying relief to the Trimmers, despite the fact that it issued a deficiency determination that they owed almost $40,000 in additional tax.
• Third, the IRS argued that if there was a final administrative determination denying relief it was unreviewable.
• And for good measure, it asserted that there was no abuse of discretion because there was no showing that Mr. Trimmer was unable to complete the rollovers in the required sixty days.

After the IRS rebuffed the court’s suggestion that it give further consideration to a hardship waiver, the Tax Court rejected each and every one of the government’s arguments.

The court rejected the argument that a hardship waiver could only be obtained through a request for a private letter ruling, the method prescribed by Rev. Proc. 2003-16. In the Tax Court’s view, this argument failed to consider the independent authority that the IRS examination unit had to consider a waiver request in the course of examining a return. 2017 U.S. Tax Ct. LEXIS 15 at *14-*17. Specifically, the court noted that the Internal Revenue Manual indicated that examiners have “authority to recommend the proper disposition of all identified issues.” Id. at *16 (quoting IRM ¶ 4.10.7.4(2) (Jan. 1, 2006)). It also observed that subsequent modifications to Rev. Proc. 2003-16 were consistent with this pre-existing discretion. Id. at *17-*18. The court also noted that the examiner reviewing the Trimmers’ return had requested their comments on the proposal to treat the distributions as taxable; it further observed that the examiner had not refused to consider Mr. Trimmer’s submission and had never indicated that he needed to seek a private letter ruling. Id. at *18-*19.

The court quickly rejected the IRS’s contention that the denial of the requested waiver was not a final administrative determination because it technically invited a further response from Mr. Trimmer in a clause that the Tax Court characterized as “boilerplate.” Id. at *21. Similarly, the court rejected the argument that it lacked jurisdiction to review the decision not to grant a waiver, noting that its jurisdiction from a notice of deficiency reached “administrative determinations that are necessary to determine the merits of deficiency determinations.” Id. at *22-*23. Given the general presumption that discretionary administrative acts are subject to judicial review, and the absence of any limitation on judicial review in the relevant provision of the Code or its legislative history, the Tax Court held that the procedures established to examine deficiencies “logically contemplate review of such a denial as one element of the deficiency determination.” Id. at *23-*24 (citations omitted).

Next, the Tax Court considered what standard of review it should apply, concluding that appropriate standard was to examine whether the IRS “abused [its]discretionary authority by exercising it arbitrarily, capriciously, or without sound basis in law or fact.” Id. at *27 (citations omitted). The court readily concluded that the IRS had abused its discretion, given the fact that the relevant agent had denied the request for a waiver while operating without a complete understanding of the statute and failed to address any of the facts and circumstances outlined by Mr. Trimmer. Id. at *28.

The IRS then sought to assert that there was no abuse of discretion because Mr. Trimmer had not offered any substantiation for his assertions. The Tax Court rejected this contention because the information was never requested. Noting also that the Trimmers had submitted expert evidence before it, the court concluded that the IRS had abused its discretion and had failed to offer a reasoned basis for its refusal to grant a waiver; consequently, the court concluded that it should review the denial on a de novo basis. Id. at *29.

After rejecting a hyper-technical motion in limine that sought to bar the testimony of the Trimmers’ expert, the Tax Court “finally” turned to the merits of the request for the hardship waiver. Id. at *49-*50. Focusing on the statutory language authorizing a waiver if strict enforcement “would be against equity or good conscience,” the Tax Court then observed that a prior memorandum decision had held that severe health problems excused a failure to make estimated tax payments under a provision authorizing the IRS to waive the estimated tax penalty if imposing it would be “against equity and good conscience.” Id. at *50-*51 (citing Meyer v. Comm’r, T.C. Memo. 2003-12, 2003 U.S. Tax Ct. Mem. LEXIS 12 (Jan. 13, 2003)). After surveying a variety of other federal statutes, the Tax Court concluded that it should construe the phrase “equity or good conscience” as embracing “a broad and flexible concept of fairness.” Id. at *52-*53.

The court then examined the factors governing a waiver determination under Rev. Proc. 2003-16. Three of these factors were relevant: The taxpayer’s inability to complete the roll over; any use the taxpayer made of the funds; and the amount of elapsed time. Id. at *53-*54. As the Trimmers had simply left the funds on deposit in their bank account and had acted promptly when alerted to the need to roll them over into an IRA, the court focused its attention on whether Mr. Trimmer’s depression was a sufficient disability to excuse his failure to make the roll over election. The court was satisfied that the standard was met, notwithstanding evidence that Mr. Trimmer had written checks at the prompting of his wife and had deposited the relevant distribution checks. Id. at *57-*58. The Tax Court finished its analysis of the refusal to grant Mr. Trimmer a waiver by reviewing two private letter rulings that had granted waivers in similar situations, leading the court to conclude that its construction of the waiver standard was similar to what the IRS had done in the past.

Trimmer is interesting on several levels. First, the court’s willingness to recognize the impact of depression on individuals is laudable. Second, the court’s opinion is a rare instance in which the Internal Revenue Manual is treated as persuasive authority. And the case reflects a sensitivity to the frustrations of individual taxpayers who have to interact with the IRS that is refreshing. Of course, the fact pattern was fairly extreme, as the IRS made no effort whatsoever to inform the taxpayer how to request a waiver. The outcome might have been different if Mr. Trimmer had been told that he needed to file a request for a private letter ruling or had been asked to substantiate his claim that he was impaired. The court’s opinion also suggests some degree of frustration with the lawyers representing the government, who seemed to contest every conceivable issue. For example, in asserting that the petitioners’ expert testimony should be barred, the government argued that the expert exceeded her authority under New York’s licensing law for social workers by offering opinion testimony that she was qualified to offer.

The case is noteworthy for another reason: It was handled by students at Fordham Law School’s federal tax clinic, operating under the supervision of Professor Elizabeth Maresca, who delivered a fair decision to a taxpayer who clearly deserved one.

Whether investigating racial matters in Havana, advocating for asylum seekers in Texas, or building a home in Florida, dozens of Fordham Law students served the public interest in a myriad of ways on their alternative spring break trips this year.

The spring break experiences of groups such as Universal Justice, a student-run organization in Fordham Law’s Public Interest Resource Center, follow in a long tradition of public-service projects. Stein Scholars and PIRC members have sponsored alternative spring break trips for almost 30 years, reflecting the service-oriented ethos of the Law School.

Here are a few of their stories.

Universal Justice – Cuba

A year after President Obama reopened American relations with Cuba, members of Universal Justice journeyed to Havana on a fact-finding mission to learn what extent race and racism play in everyday society. While ascertaining concrete information on structural racism proved difficult, UJ members’ conversations with Cuban officials and residents raised the specter that a change is underway. UJ presented its findings during a two-day national conference for the full normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations held at Fordham Law School in March.

“The biggest thing with Cuba in terms of race is they’re finally opening up the dialogue,” the trip’s advisor 3L Josh Colon said, noting that, while Cuban law mentions race, this cultural conversation has mostly been absent. “There’s more of a feeling you can speak out about race and won’t get in trouble for it.”

Cuba’s tenuous, newfound relationship with the United States has jumpstarted its tourism and restaurant industries. Yet salaries for most Cubans remain startling low. The students noted that a doctor makes $90 per month while a tour guide can make hundreds of dollars in tips from just one group. They also encountered a former lawyer turned restaurant owner who left his legal practice out of economic necessity.

“There’s a lot of hope that things will continue to move in a positive direction,” 3L Susan Moskovits added, in reference to the hope among Cubans that trade will open and the embargo—referred to by Cubans as a blockade—will lift.

Universal Justice’s Cuba trip this spring followed recent trips to the Philippines and Dominican Republic. For UJ member and 2L Olivia Scandura, the experiences have been invaluable.

“Just having an understanding of how different countries’ legal structures work is extremely important, and it’s due to Fordham and the UJ program that I’ve had these opportunities,” Scandura said.

Immigration Advocacy Project – Dilley, Texas

Almost two thousand miles southwest of New York, 1L Jessie Boas spent her spring break at the South Texas Family Residential Center interviewing asylum-seeking women from Latin America about the horrid conditions that forced them to flee north to the U.S. border. Boas, a board member for Immigration Advocacy Project, gained the women’s trust by first asking, in Spanish, about their kids, hobbies, and favorite food, building trust. Then the hard part began.

Boas and other IAP volunteers prepared the women for their Credible Fear Interview, a requirement of U.S. immigration services for those who want to apply for asylum and are subject to expedited removal. If an asylum officer finds an individual to have a credible fear of persecution or torture, the officer refers her case to an immigration judge for a full hearing on the asylum claim.

“I was taken by the ability of these women to keep their composure while they were telling the most harrowing, gut-wrenching stories I’ve ever heard,” Boas said. “I don’t know if it was because of tremendous inner strength or if they were numb to the experience.”

Fordham has sent four separate groups, including three from the IAP, to Dilley since spring 2016. The IAP recently received the NYSBA President’s Pro Bono Service Award.

For Boas, who first became interested in serving immigration populations during a three-year stint with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, the hands-on experience she received in Dilley afforded her an “incredible opportunity” to do client interviews, learn to adapt to adversarial conditions, and work alongside other students eager to fight for immigrant rights.

“I’d encourage any law school student or lawyer to go to Dilley for a week or two weeks,” Boas said, adding that the trip combines a major public-interest issue with an opportunity to develop lawyering skills that translate across many legal fields.

Habitat for Humanity – New Smyrna Beach, Florida

As the president of Fordham Law’s Habitat for Humanity chapter, 3L Lauren Mastronardi obtained quite literal hands-on experience during her spring break trip.

Mastronardi and a small group of students and administrators, including Public Interest Resource Center Assistant Dean Tom Schoenherr, spent five days on Florida’s east coast helping to build the interior of a new home. Hammering boards provided a welcome opportunity to give back and take a break from legal concerns, said Mastronardi, who plans on working for Latham & Watkins in New York after graduation.

“A home is such an essential part of people’s lives,” she said. “It gives them a base. Working alongside the person who will own the house gives you an opportunity to see the fruits of your labor.”

When Fordham Law Professor Catherine Powell and students Lorena Jiron and Tina Milburn visited Havana over spring break, the old buildings and vintage cars gave them the sensation that time had stood still. The English language spoken all around them, however, told them that the Cuban capital was moving forward.

Powell and the two students traveled to Cuba in March to learn how a move toward normalization in the relationship between the United States and Cuba, sparked by President Obama’s visit last year, has impacted Cubans. The group is working on a paper that will include findings from their visit and assess recommendations on what the United States and Cuba should keep in mind for future negotiations.

The idea for the Cuba trip, which was sponsored by the School’s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, originated in Powell’s Constitutional Rights and Rights in Human Perspective policy seminar. One project her seminar students worked on concerned U.S. policies aimed at normalizing relations with Cuba and Iran. In that class, one student wrote a paper questioning the impact on the Cuban people of normalizing relations. That question, along with the potential that President Trump would reverse or shut down the new relationship, motivated Powell to seek funding from the Leitner Center to visit the country.

“We thought we would be getting there before the flood of Americans, before Cuba ‘arrived,’ but turns out Cuba has already ‘arrived,’” Powell said. “There were tons of Americans there, for better or worse, many of whom had the same idea we had—spring break in Cuba. It was exciting, but had echoes of spring break in Fort Lauderdale, given the sheer number of college students.” Before long, Powell realized Cuba is an interesting case study of what scholars are beginning to refer to as the “law of tourism,” which analyzes legal implications and distributional effects of the tourist sector.

The group spoke with everyday Cubans—professors, civil rights activists, taxi drivers, hairdressers, restaurant servers—who shared optimism about the infusion of tourist dollars but also expressed concerns about distributional consequences along race, gender, and class lines. For instance, the better educated, particularly those who speak English or have remittances from relatives in Miami, would be better positioned to have the capital necessary to operate an Airbnb property, Powell said.

Jiron and Milburn, both fluent Spanish speakers, recalled a day trip they took to Viñales, a rural town in western Cuba, where they spoke with workers on a tobacco plantation, who described having to pay 90 percent of their income to the government.

“In the 1970s, when the economy was bad and there was less demand for Cuban tobacco—in part because of the U.S. embargo on Cuban goods—the fact that the government would take 90 percent of the tobacco and pay a flat fee in return was very helpful,” Jiron said. “Now there is a high demand, and the government makes thousands per pound while still paying at the rate set decades ago.”

Jiron and Milburn also reflected on conversations they had with Cubans on race, women’s rights, and LGBT equality measures; they discovered that Cuban law, while aspirational, is often not practical in its everyday implementation. For instance, both men and women receive generous parental leave after the birth of a child; however, the students learned from officials at the Centro Martin Luther King that fathers rarely take leave. Meanwhile, mothers often take full leave because there are limited support systems, such as childcare, to allow them to work while also raising their infant.

The students found the Cuban people welcoming and friendly but noted that interviewees expressed fear of their government and were careful with what they said. One woman informed them cameras were all over Havana surveilling residents.

“There’s a sense that you’re always being watched, and it’s unnerving and frightening at times,” Milburn said.

How this relationship between the government and its citizens will change as more tourists visit the island nation remains unclear.

Milburn noted that in her previous visit to Cuba in January 2016—prior to Obama’s trip to the island—no one spoke English, and there were no other Americans around. She predicted that if such changes could occur in one year, the experience they had this spring, such as having extremely limited e-mail and phone access, would look nothing like one they might have five years from now.

For Jiron, the fact that Powell would ask her, a former student, to participate on this unique trip symbolized the essence of her Fordham experience.

“That Professor Powell knew I was a Spanish speaker and had roots in Latin America and asked me to join her on this trip is something another professor at another law school would never have thought to do,” said Jiron, who later invited Milburn, her fellow moot court teammate. “That kind of connection with Professor Powell and other faculty of staff has been so special.”

Powell praised the Leitner Center for providing students and faculty “irreplaceable” fieldwork opportunities that allow them to speak to real people impacted by the law and policy.

“For students to have an opportunity to ask questions about our diplomatic relationship, political relationship, economic relationship, and how law informs all of that in such a dynamic context, was phenomenal,” Powell said. “For the students and for me, this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip,” she added.

This summer, members of Fordham Law School’s Stein Scholars program will promote the public good and advance their legal aptitude with domestic and international externships in a wide variety of fields including women’s rights, LGBT housing issues, and labor and immigration law.

Stein Scholars, a student-driven academic and service program, encourages students to maintain their commitment to, and prepares them for, the practice of law in service to the public through specialized academic requirements, summer externships, interaction with practitioners and academics, and opportunities to engage in community service.

Below is a sampling of what some of the Stein Scholars will be doing this summer.

DeAnna Baumle – ACLU Women’s Rights Project

Over the past two summers, DeAnna Baumle’s externships with Day One, a nonprofit that provides legal and social services to young survivors of intimate partner violence, and the National Institute for Reproductive Health have centered around direct services or larger policy issues. This summer, Baumle, who is in Fordham’s four-year M.S.W./J.D. dual degree program, will branch out toward a new legal area, impact litigation, with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.

“Impact litigation is very different, for instance, than representing one person in order to help them get an order of protection,” Baumle said. “Instead you’re representing a person who’s suing a workplace for gender discrimination—and the effects of that litigation will affect anybody who’s been subject to any similar discrimination. So impact litigation basically changes the law through the case.”

Baumle will receive her Master of Social Work this month, and then have one year of law school remaining. She described learning about and studying the intersection of these two disciplines simultaneously as “incredibly difficult” but also “incredibly rewarding.”

Without the Stein Scholars program, she doubted she would have navigated the two programs so well.

“Having that sense of community, particularly in law school when a lot of the focus tends to be more on corporate law or Big Law—having that support and being able to learn from all the amazing students in the Stein Scholars Program has been an incredible experience,” Baumle said.

Frank Kearl – ProDESC in Mexico City

Frank Kearl’s summer externship journey started, unbeknownst to him, when his Immigration Law professor, Jennifer Gordon, inquired about his summer plans. Kearl replied, among other possibilities, that he might head south to Mexico City, a metropolitan city whose art, food, and landscape impressed him some years earlier. Upon hearing this, Gordon revealed she had a contact there.

As a result of this connection, Kearl will work on immigration and labor law issues for ProDESC, an economic and social rights group that does labor organizing among Mexican mine workers and Mexican nationals who obtain non-immigrant visas to work in the United States.

“This summer will provide me a great chance to receive hands-on experience with international labor law and labor organizing from people doing incredible work down there,” Kearl said. That work will be relevant when he returns to New York, he noted, because the populations he’ll work with in Mexico City are also present in the United States. Plus, by then he expects to have dramatically improved his Spanish language skills.

Kearl saluted the Stein Scholars program for affording him outlets to explore non-traditional ways to apply his skills and highlighted the work of Fordham’s “world-class faculty,” such as Gordon and Professor Gemma Solimene, on immigration issues.

“Being able to work with people doing creative things is inspiring and makes me feel better about what other people might perceive as a risk, going to a city I don’t intend to live in,” Kearl said, adding his time with ProDESC will “get me closer to the goals I want to achieve with this degree.”

Rachel Manning – NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation

Choosing between a federal or state agency can be a vexing one for students as they pursue externship opportunities. That was not the case, however, for Rachel Manning as she evaluated policy positions in environmental law this summer.

The Trump administration’s anti-environment platform made an Environmental Protection Agency internship an unpredictable, if not discouraging, gambit. This situation made working at the state level particularly appealing to Manning.

“It’s an empowering time to work at the state level,” Manning said. “New York has a pretty strong commitment to environmental issues, and I will have an opportunity to work with people who have dedicated their career to upholding laws that protect the environment and people.”

This summer, Manning will enter the policy realm for the first time, learning up-close how regulations are enforced. Her previous work at Mount Sinai Hospital and the Institute for Family Health centered around nonprofit work focusing on environmental and public health issues.

Manning credited the Stein Scholars program and Andrew Chapin, director of counseling and public interest scholars at Fordham Law’s Public Interest Resource Center, for providing her the “individualized attention” necessary to land her externship.

Isedua Oribhabor – Ella Baker Fellowship at Center for Constitutional Rights

In 2001, Isedua Oribhabor, then a young girl, emigrated from Nigeria, with her family of six, to Missouri. Years later, that experience and subsequent Fordham Law experiences with the Stein Scholars and as a Crowley Scholar with the Leitner Center have compelled her to use her legal knowledge to fight for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers—especially in a political climate where they are shunned or, worse, imprisoned.

“It would be completely absurd for me not to care about immigrant’s rights, because I benefitted from a system that helped my family,” Oribhabor said, noting her family were not refugees. “The idea that I would not take advantage of a chance to do something about it is inconceivable.”

Oribhabor hopes to receive practical training on a variety of contemporary issues this summer as the Ella Baker Internship at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a progressive nonprofit that bills itself as being “on the front lines for social justice.” Oribhabor’s initial interest in CCR, she recalled, resulted from Professor Joseph Landau’s Emergency and the Rule of Law course, which discussed the organization’s role in Guantanamo litigation.

Law school has expanded Oribhabor’s interests from domestic to both domestic and international, the former social worker said.

“As someone who came into law school knowing I wanted to do public interest work, being with other like-minded students in the Stein Scholars program has been a great source of support and a resource to help me find work in public interest,” Oribhabor said.

Johanna Sanders – Brooklyn Legal Services, LGBTQ/HIV Advocacy Project

Raised in Forest Hills, Queens, Johanna Sanders has observed New York’s housing prices skyrocket over the past two decades and the way they changed the city and impacted its residents, often in negative ways. In particular, Sanders, a lesbian, became aware of how these changes specifically affected the LGBTQ community, and vowed to make a difference.

This summer, Sanders will extern at Brooklyn Legal Services, where she will work with the LGBTQ community on a variety of direct service projects. The experience, she hopes, will put her first-year legal education into practice and produce positive outcomes for people experiencing difficulties finding or keeping affordable housing due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“It’s really important to have specific resources targeted at the LGBTQ community,” Sanders said, noting this includes informing people of their rights with landlords. “There’s a tremendous amount of discrimination with LGBTQ tenants, and a lot of these people don’t know where to turn.”

Sanders took three years off between undergrad and law school on LGBTQ issues in New York and abroad in South Africa and Australia. Those experiences heightened her knowledge about herself and her LGBTQ community, and she hopes her time at Brooklyn Legal Services will do the same.

“Within the LGBTQ realm, there’s so much to learn, in terms of what I want to work on,” Sanders said, adding that adoption and surrogacy issues are other areas of interest. “I am excited to learn this summer and take this knowledge with me into my second year of law school.”

New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman served as the graduation speaker at Fordham Law School’s 110th Law School Diploma Ceremony on Monday, May 22. The ceremony was held on Fordham University’s Rose Hill Campus.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, and Matthew Diller, dean of Fordham Law, conferred degrees on 529 individuals: J.D., M.S.L., LL.M., and S.J.D. graduates. Schneiderman, who has served as New York State’s highest ranking law enforcement officer since 2010, received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree for his leadership in the service of others and his unflagging commitment to the rule of law. He praised Fordham Law for being a “national leader” in the access to justice movement.

In his welcome remarks, Dean Diller celebrated the achievements of the graduating class while reminding them of the serious responsibilities that legal professionals assume.

“As lawyers, you are the stewards of the rule of law. You guarantee its future. And we look to you to safeguard our democracy,” Diller said. “You stand out as beacons of promise. If we are at a crossroads, then you are the signposts that will lead us in the right direction.”

Diller praised the efforts of clinical students who won federal court cases on tax and trademark issues, members of the Immigration Advocacy Project who received the NYSBA President’s Pro Bono Service Award, and participants in know-your-rights workshops for immigrants and parents at local high schools. Diller also recognized the individual success of graduate Joshua Liebman, who missed the ceremony because he was receiving the Burton Award for Distinguished Legal Writing at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Following remarks by Diller and Father McShane, the Law School honored Professor Carl Minzner as Teacher of the Year and Michael J. Lane as Adjunct Teacher of the Year. The Dean’s Medal of Recognition was presented to two individuals: Professor Nestor M. Davidson, for his exemplary service as associate dean for academic affairs; and Professor Gail Hollister, a torts expert who retired this year after an almost four-decade teaching career.

In addition, the Eugene J. Keefe Award was presented to Nitza Milagros Escalera, assistant dean of student affairs and diversity initiatives, and Herbert Zell Rosen, president of the Student Bar Association.

Throughout the summer, Fordham Law School will host a trio of programs aimed at preparing high school and college students from underrepresented communities for careers in the legal field. Students will learn about the justice system, participate in mock trial competitions, and gain the skills needed for academic success.

Each of the three programs focuses on introducing the legal field to a slightly different population. Scales of Justice Academy focuses on young women, the Law and Justice Institute focuses on college-bound students from New York City public schools, and the Skadden Arps Honors Program in Legal Studies at CCNY focuses on low-income and underrepresented college students interested in pursuing a legal education.

“The Scales of Justice Academy gives promising girls great support in exposing them to law school, professional and courtroom settings. It really has been phenomenal,” said Fordham Associate Dean for Experiential Education Leah Hill, who works as a teacher and mentor with Scales of Justice.

Scales of Justice was founded by the Honorable La Tia W. Martin, a Bronx County Supreme Court justice who created the program with the intention of opening legal careers to young women attending public schools in New York City. During the three-week program, participants hear from distinguished legal practitioners and take trips to law firms and courtrooms throughout New York. The program culminates in a trip to Washington D.C. to visit national monuments and the United States Supreme Court

“I conduct a lecture on academic success focused on how to prepare for law school. Thereafter, I visit the program at least two times a week to let the girls know that Fordham is their home and that they should feel comfortable here and that they belong in law school,” said Hill.

Instilling a feeling of belonging in those traditionally excluded from the legal profession is at the core of the Law and Justice Institute’s mission as well.

“The Law and Justice Institute is a five-week intensive criminal law program that works with rising ninth-graders from public schools all over New York City,” said Legal Outreach managing director of legal education and Fordham Law graduate Grace Pickering ‘08. “It gives them the opportunity to learn about the law, participate in a mock trial, and re-engage with our justice system.”

The institute was created by Legal Outreach co-founder James O’Neal. While a student at Harvard Law School in the early 1980s, O’Neal observed that most of his classmates came from families with privileged college traditions, and that few were first-time attendees like himself. By introducing ninth-grade students to the law, the institute tries to swell the ranks of first-generation law students attending institutions like Harvard.

“It’s always slightly chilling to talk to my students who at 13 or 14 have been stopped by the police,” said Pickering. “A lot of our students are seeking fundamental, practical knowledge about the legal and judicial systems.”

In addition to general information about the criminal justice system, the institute provides its attendees the tools they need for academic success. The institute is the first part of the College Bound program, from which some 80 percent of Legal Outreach’s graduates complete a four-year college degree, in sharp distinction to their peers, fewer than 50 percent of whom graduate from college in four years.

The Skadden Arps Honors Program in Legal Studies focuses on making legal education a reality for low-income and underrepresented students already in college. The City College of New York, in partnership with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, provides students with a stipend needed to participate in a legal internship, mentoring from practicing lawyers, and academic skills workshops that tutor them in legal writing and LSAT preparation.

As part of the program, students visit law schools around New York City in order to learn about the reality of studying at those institutions, and how best to prepare their applications for admission.

“The Skadden Arps Honors Program helps create a kind of pipeline to Fordham Law, with a handful of program students applying to the Law School each year,” said Elizabeth Cooper, associate professor and faculty director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice. “It’s a wonderful way of forging a connection to students who may not necessarily know much about Fordham, or about what a Fordham legal education is all about. We always feel fortunate when honors program students later choose to enroll in the Law School.”

On July 27, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund named recent Fordham alumna Lorena Jiron ’17 as one of its 2016–2017 Law School Scholarship Program recipients.

A civil rights organization that pursues litigation concerning a range of issues pertinent to Latinos in the United States, MALDEF uses its Law School Scholarship Program to recognize law students whose work furthers the organization’s mission.

“MALDEF looks at any kind of legislation or policy that seems to be targeting Latinos, or else is disproportionately affecting them, and they fight back,” says Jiron. “If I were to have a dream organization to work for, I think it’s that one.”

Jiron’s nascent career suggests that the pair would complement each other nicely.

The daughter of a single mother who immigrated to the United States from Nicaragua, Jiron grew up in Miami, where she excelled academically and earned admission to Middlebury College. Shortly after Jiron graduated from Middlebury, her mother passed away. The ensuing legal complications, and the sense of helplessness they engendered, convinced Jiron to pursue a career in law.

While at Fordham, Jiron has developed professional credentials in keeping with her ambition to practice law in the public interest. A Stein Scholar and board member of Fordham’s Latin American Law Students Association, Jiron has advocated for the rights of immigrants and women both inside her academic work and without. She has pursued the cause of equal civil rights while interning with the New York Legal Assistance Group, NYC Legal Services, and the NAACP-LDF. While in law school, she helped conduct fieldwork in Cuba concerning the future of U.S.-Cuban relations and was instrumental in bringing the Metro Latin American Law Student Association’s Pa’lante conference to the Fordham campus. Prior to attending law school, she furthered the cause of obtaining equal rights for women by teaching at a girls-only boarding school in Kabul, Afghanistan.

At present, Jiron is an Equal Justice Works Fellow pursuing an initiative she developed on the safety and wellbeing of young women suffering from intimate partner violence.

The post-graduate fellowship from Equal Justice Works provides funding, training. and guidance for attorneys pursuing public interest work. “My sponsors are Verizon Wireless and DLA Piper, and my project is the ‘Single Mother Empowerment Project,’” says Jiron. “The project will be at Day One, which is an organization in New York that works with young people who are victims of intimate partner violence.”

Jiron intends to continue her work in the public service field.

“With the current political situation and the way immigrants are treated, there’s just such a need for, at the very least, Spanish-speaking attorneys,” says Jiron. “I have all the legal skills that Fordham has given me and I have the cultural competency, I have the language competency. I just think that this is where I need to be right now.”